Posts tagged “holland”

My traffic light is red. I stop. (Do take note of this; stopping for traffic lights isn’t anyone’s second nature after more than 10 years in China – remarkable, really!) I wait and watch thick raindrops splash on my windscreen. Soon I will need to switch the wipers from interval mode to constant. A young woman is crossing the road. With one hand she pushes her stroller loaded with Aldi shopping bags hanging heavily on the handlebar while holding an umbrella with the other. (more…)

It’s been awhile since I last was in Holland. One year to be precise, or, as my assistant puts it: 12 boxes of Nutricia baby milk powder ago. She measures time by what is dear to her, and don’t we all? My daily drive to work used to take me 4 songs, but after we moved to our new home it only takes one song. Sometimes even less than that and then I drive around the block just to hear the end of a Mozart cantata or Sting’s ‘Mr. President’. (more…)

A few days ago my daughter and I were researching options for her study in Holland, freely surfing away over the world wide web from our small and cozy little cabin deep in the endless wild Dutch forest, when we came across the following remark of an anthropology student in Utrecht: “China is a large and mysterious country”. Now that gave us a good laugh! He surely hadn’t done a thorough study or had slept through the lectures and obviously had missed the last developments in China or he is one of those bookworm nerds that never leaves queen or country. Not to mention what all this tells us about his lecturer or at least the university’s marketing head. China is large, sure, but mysterious? (more…)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday called off a historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un scheduled for next month, citing Pyongyang's "open hostility," and warned that the U.S. military was ready in the event of any reckless acts by North Korea.